{"id":21229,"date":"2019-10-26T16:59:02","date_gmt":"2019-10-26T21:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crc.umontreal.ca\/?post_type=billet&p=21229"},"modified":"2019-11-07T08:24:41","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T13:24:41","slug":"qui-sont-les-clients-dans-un-processus-de-concours-en-architecture","status":"publish","type":"billet","link":"https:\/\/crc.umontreal.ca\/en\/billet\/qui-sont-les-clients-dans-un-processus-de-concours-en-architecture\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO ARE THE CLIENTS IN AN ARCHITECTURE COMPETITION PROCESS?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jury of the Beaubourg Plateau competition, 1971. From left to right: Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Francis, Jean Prouv\u00e9, Emile Aillaud, Philip Johnson, and Willem Sandberg<\/em><\/p>\n

A favourite argument of the fiercest opponents of architectural competitions rests on the importance of the listening relationship, even connivance, between the architects and their clients. The competitions would have the adverse effect of interfering, preventing a balance between the expectations of one and the propositions of the other. In this representation of the approach \u2013 yet denied in the long history of these contests \u2013 the client would be ultimately largely absent.<\/p>\n

This representation, recurrent but biased, tends to forget that the interventions of the clients marks the process: before, during and after the competition. Before, because it is up to the customer to formulate the terms of an order in the form of a program and quality criteria. During, since there are most likely representatives of the client in the jury; we will get back to this. After, because it can also be considered that it is legally up to the client to accept or to refuse the result: this rule being clearly written in most competition rules.<\/p>\n

The enumeration of the client\u2019s representatives in a competition is however expressive: the professional advisor, the quality of the competition documents, the members of the jury, the diverse committees, the public presentation devices, etc. Beginning with the professional advisor, who can carry out all the actions necessary on behalf of the client but can also limit his performance to a professional service to the one who pays, in detriment of the public\u2019s interest. For example, can the chief librarian be considered the only client of a contest for a new public library? In all civil and democratic logic, the lambda user of the library, much like the Minister of Culture, would both be legitimate representatives of the client of the public library.<\/p>\n

In this coil of responsibilities, typical of spaces and public spaces, the client cannot be confined to one end or the other of the decision-making chain and, paradoxically, all the members of the competing teams could also be considered as potential clients for the public building under study. It is an ability to anticipate the needs \u2013 to understand the expectations and the needs of the users \u2013 that emerges among all form of architectural empathy.<\/p>\n

But in fact, like in theory, the entity that finds itself at the nodal point of the principle of the competition, the one who not only has the right but the obligation to behave as a potential client is simply the “jury of the competition “.<\/p>\n

It is shocking to have to remind certain organizers, public and private, that the jury is the representative of the public and must be assembled to embody all the representations of the client. The jury is that “temporary client” to which the design teams submits their projects, in hopes that the process of collective qualitative judgement will be as fair and as representative as possible of all the interests at stake. In other words, the jury is the closest embodiment of an ideal model of the complex “client” entity of a competition for a public building.<\/p>\n

That being understood, forming a jury with elected officials is as delicate as introducing an architect whose fame risks mobilizing or inhibiting debates. Even the elected representatives who are legitimate spokespersons of the public, should not impose themselves in a jury to avoid impeding all discussion and therefore all collective judgement by their apparently indisputable representativeness(1). As a general rule, the jury is composed of representatives speaking for the public interest, but some competition rules consider that neither elected officials nor the civil servants should act as members, since they can be subordinated to political or administrative interests all the while forgetting the needs of the general public. The history of competitions is a slow and continuous movement towards the democratic recognition of the public interest: the same way the history of the Internet reflects the tensions between transparent communication and manipulating propaganda.<\/p>\n

In a competition database such as the Canadian Competitions Catalogue<\/strong>, the ontological structure of the computer program distinguishes many entities underlying the concept of “individual”. We distinguish for example the project manager, the representative, the professional advisor, the members of the jury, the designers, etc., but in this list the entity “client” is absent, because the logic of a computer system does not suit heterogenous entities.<\/p>\n

This reflection, which may seem theoretical, does not signify that clients that choose the process of the competition to realize their projects would easily recognize that they are participating in a collective enterprise: even less in the production of architectural knowledge. But they sometimes happen to consider competitions as a way of communicating with the general public and nowadays it is not rare to encounter situations in which a new representative of the client, the “communication advisor”, will enter the decision-making chain to control the message, sometimes blocking the dissemination of the submitted projects, except, of course, for the winner. This intervention is problematic, since a process designed to preserve the representativeness of the public, as well as transparency, is transformed once more into a black box (2). Access to public understanding of a competition becomes impossible once communication officers \u2013 of clients as well as designers \u2013 focus on retaining information.<\/p>\n

At a time where news \u2013 both real and fake \u2013 reaches us in real time, it is these exact characteristics of transparency, collective debate and fairness of the competition that determine its capacity to welcome all the interests and the representatives of the client.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen whether these interests are better represented in a call for tenders, where the customer hides somewhere behind spreadsheets and where, in the end, the “lowest bidder” could very well be the true name of the client.<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/p>\n